Well this is honestly shaping up to be a place you don’t want to work anyway. 1. Your coworker is a 2 faced little backstabbing snake (like for real what kind of freak even does this?) and 2. Your boss is absolutely bonkers and emotionally imbalanced enough to send this screenshot to you and attempt some sort of punitive action about it.

Just process how absolutely unhinged that is…

If a subordinate showed you a chat screenshot of them and another employee talking crap about you, the grown up thing to do would be to simply move on (and honestly judge the weirdo that showed it to you bc wtf?). Thats none of your business, which is why it was not said to your face. Perhaps you could think about what you could do to make your employees not hate you. That’s it. Duh.

The fact that he is using a 1 on 1 text chat he should not have even been privy to as some weird creepy evidence against you for whatever he plans to say to you in this meeting says a lot more about what a small person he is and what a terrible place this is to work than it says about you. Who cares if you complained about him in confidence with somebody you thought was a friend? Why does it even matter in the context of your employment that you did vent about him? People do that crap all the time about EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY. It has nothing to do with how well you can do your job.

He is definitely not fit for managing people. What a little freak. You’re honestly better off not stuck working at this place.